Fanaticism

Mark Steyn has written an interesting article for the Wall Street Journal focusing on the failing demographics of Europe in the face of Muslim extremism.

While I don't completely disagree with him, I do think Steyn has a bit of falling sky syndrome in his opinion, being as it's based on what are essentially religious hysterics over a perfectly natural birth rate trend in advanced societies. I do agree with him that there is an encroaching welfare state mentality in much of the West, especially in Europe. And while those social problems are deeply concerning over the short term, I see a very different outcome than Mr. Steyn over the next fifty years. It involves the killing of Muslim fanatics in job lots.

Religious fanaticism may win battles, but it inevitably loses the war. Whether it loses to a republic or an empire is irrelevant. It's simply a matter of how high the bodies pile up before the dust settles. During the Thirty Years War and the Crusades, the piles were very high indeed, and consisted mostly of the fanatics.

Besides, I see far more important things to worry about than a bunch of smelly camel herders with delusions of medieval granduer. Technology is going to put us so far ahead of them, they won't stand a chance. The problem is, we may not stand a chance of surviving our creations.

At the very best, all of human society is going to be completely restructured over the next century by eugenics and molecular-scale engineering. At worst, those same creations may destroy our society. The Cold War will look damned appealing in hindsight. The Arab Muslims, meanwhile, are nothing more than an anachronistic distraction, like cavemen hammering on the steel doors of a missile silo. We can cut them down at will; it's merely a matter of deciding to do it.

If Italy, Sweden, France and their ilk fall to Islamic fanatics due to internal societal weaknesses, it's not the end of Western society. It's just target consolidation.

(Hat-tip to Harry S.)